Duluth Birth and Baby Fair History
By Stacy Holden, Founder
A seed is planted
My family moved to Duluth from Santa Cruz in January of 2004. At the time Dustin and I had a 2 ½ year old Coulter and we were 7 ½ months pregnant with our second child. We didn’t know a soul in Duluth and had just left a rich parenting/birthing/mama community in Santa Cruz. I was lucky enough to fall into La Leche League right away and from there found my homebirth midwife, the Birth Collective, and my community. By September I realized I needed a circle of women and I set out to make some friends! I was a LLL leader, I started a post-partum support group and also hosted a weekly prenatal yoga support circle. That’s when I started noticing that the more circles of women overlapped, the richer the connections and support became. I came up with the name WOMEN CIRCLING WOMEN and loved the place it held in our community.
The prenatal yoga and support circle came from an amazing woman in Santa Cruz that I had the honor of training with. Her circle changed my life and my trajectory among women. My dearest friends grew from that early time of parenting. One of the other things that also supported me while in Santa Cruz was their Baby Fair (Belly and Blooms or something like that). I only attended once but it gave me enough of a spark that I knew that I wanted to bring it to my new community in Duluth. In the circle I had been noticing that women often would say that they couldn’t find info. But once they were “in” then they could find doulas, natural birth classes, midwives, etc. So I knew that it would be beneficial to the broader community if we could bring folks together to see their options all in one place.
Early Beginnings
We started in January of 2007 while I was newly pregnant with my 3rd child. We hosted it in the basement of Peace Church. At the time there was a Childbirth Collective that had a lot of active doulas and they were an AMAZING help. Chelsea Morgan (Magic Box Photography) was my first partner in organizing, brainstorming, poster making and more. That first Fair was already packed with both vendors and families. We hosted those first ones on a Thursday night. We had a Birth Story Panels, Q & A and a Fathering Circle. The first few seemed like they were heavier on the Natural Birth Community Side. I figured that people easily found the Mainstream info, I wanted to focus on helping people find the alternative voice.
Creating a more diverse and inclusive Fair
That only lasted for a few Fairs before I realized that what we really needed was to bridge the gap between the hospital world and homebirth world. When I first moved to Duluth the word “doula” was a bad word! They were not warmly welcomed into the hospitals. The hospitals weren’t yet Baby Friendly, women were separated from their babies at C-sec births, and there weren’t midwives at the hospitals. We knew things change only when women start asking for it and they only know to ask for change when they know that there are other options. I started putting the pieces together early that Informed Consent requires information and women needed to know what to be asking for, learning about, looking for. You don’t know different until you know something different! So I set out to make sure that our Fairs were filled with diverse information. Not everyone wants a natural or home birth. Not everyone wants a medicated birth. So we needed to have a wide variety of vendors so that families coming through would find the support that they were looking for.
A period of growth
With the inclusion of more options we realized that the space was too small and we moved it up to the Coppertop. There it was more spacious, plus they had a nursery for kids to play in while parents were at the Fair. They also had several classrooms so that we could offer more workshops. I have always felt like the workshops were golden and really wanted to make sure that we had enough room to offer a wide variety of them. I remember teaching people how to Baby Wear, we had doulas/midwives teach about natural birthing. I think we were up to about 9 classes per Fair at that time.
Community vibes
The Fairs have always been positive energy, almost reunion type events. Women came with their new babies to reconnect with providers, pregnant families came in looking for resources, UMD students joined for extra class credit. And vendors connected, reunited and networked with other vendors. We created a very vibrant birth community. And all of us have collected a huge amount of resources to be able to share with our families/clients/patients. The buzz grew, the community expanded and we outgrew that space too. They were wonderful to work with at the Coppertop. I was sad to leave but several of the people in the birth community thought we needed to get out of church basements and move to a larger venue.
Larger Venues
At some point in here Joy Herbert from Little Neetchers approached me and wanted to help organize the Fair. With her stepping in, Chelsea stepped away and Joy and I created a new fair relationship. Joy pushed hard for classier and brought a lot of energy into the Fair planning and so off we went to Clyde Iron Works. There we had a gorgeous Fair for several years. 2 floors of vendors! It was classy and noisy (too noisy!) It was almost right, but they booked out a couple years in advance. It also wasn’t ideal for a kid area or classrooms and I was really getting clear on wanting to offer as much knowledge and info to parents as possible. We needed to keep looking for a better space.
Finding the perfect fit
After much looking, we landed at the Lincoln Park Middle School in 2018. They had a spacious lunch room with huge floor to ceiling windows looking over the Bay. They had individual classrooms, the gym for a fantastic kid zone and so much parking! We had found our perfect place.
Midwife Margo Blackstone was super creative and a big out of the box thinker. She approached me to ask if she could help with the Fair. As she stepped in, Joy stepped out. Elizabeth Lehn, Ivy Nelson and Amanda Barta also came on and it was the first time that I had a “Team” helping! Things were finally coming together and felt more manageable. The posters/socials/banners/website got fancier with more help and a bigger pool of skills. It felt like we had really hit our stride and the community really looked forward to each one. We had upped our style and had fancy snacks and drinks, quality kid activities, 12 free workshops, 60+ vendors, a large number of volunteers, publicity, and so much positive energy. We spent several Fairs at the Middle School and were about to start our April 2020 Fair when the pandemic hit. Instead of cancelling the whole thing, my team decided to have a week long virtual Fair. Oh my, did we hustle to make that happen! We were able to offer all of the classes, have lots of interaction and still make all the vendors visible. It was a great success and we felt like we were able to offer tons of support during a very uncertain entry into the pandemic. We were also able to offer so much education and we were able to stay connected as a community.
We often talked about whether or not we needed it to be bi-annual. The work to organize it was a massive gift of the heart and didn’t really feel sustainable, but doing it only once a year felt like we missed too many families looking for info.
Re-birthing the Fair in 2026
We’re excited to be Re-Birthing it again this Fall. There’s a new team that’s being put together with Lacey Parr, Amanda Barta and me. And there’s room for more. We already have several women willing to take on some big organizational roles and we’re delighted that they’re willing to join us to bring our community this great event. It has been missed! For years people have reached out to ask if it’s coming back. Thanks to Amanda and Lacey, it is. We are all stronger when we’re connected, sharing resources and making sure families are getting the support that they need. We all hold a piece of that web, and by bringing all of our strands together, we will only increase the strength of our village. And we truly are Women Circling Women. Families Circling Families.